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whoever57 writes "The man who claimed ownership of 50% of Facebook has been arrested and charged with fraud in connection with his claims. The United States attorney in Manhattan said, 'Ceglia's alleged conduct not only constitutes a massive fraud attempt, but also an attempted corruption of our legal system through the manufacture of false evidence.' 'Dressing up a fraud as a lawsuit does not immunize you from prosecution.'"

Much of the film is based on testimony given at a number of depositions related to the lawsuits brought by Eduardo Saverin, the Winklevoss twins, and Divya Narendra. To this extent, the film might be considered very accurate. However, as the character Mark points out in the film, people do lie in depositions. [However if those lies are proven you could be charged with perjury]

Both Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins claim the film is very accurate while Zuckerberg and Parker maintain that it is a work of fiction.

Oh, I'm sure they vetted it to be sure that nothing could come back on them...

Correct, which is why the movie goes to great pains to emphasize that the story is as told in depositions. They are not claiming that's what happened, they are claiming that is what was said in the depositions, which is entirely factual.

but I suspect there's a lot of rainbows and kittens in there they let slide by which don't quite match up to reality.

To the contrary, given that they are dealing with people with ample access to

There were details that were certainly wrong, but in general it got the larger details right, or reasonably so. And anyone familiar with Facebook's history knows Ceglia was a lying nobody trying to extort money by being such a big pain in the ass that he would just be handed a big check to shut the fuck up. Now, it appears, he's about to find out what happens when you commit fraud.

Well from the outside it looked highly suspicious. Ceglia didn't sue until 2010 when Facebook started in 2003. He claimed he only recently "found" the contract. He went through a lot of lawyers during the course of the suit.

Don't try to defraud a company that works hand in hand with law enforcement to track and search people's patterns. Stick with defauding investors by selling bad mortgage instruments and nearly destroying the world economy. No one ever goes to jail for that, they just get a bailout.

I'm sorry, I thought Ron Paul was against TARP. The whole time. Almost everyone else involved was pushing for massive government theft, and giving it to the loo^H^H^Hreserve bankers who began the whole thing and executed it.

Patent trolls acquire obscure or forgotten patents that actually exist. Those trolls OWN the patent to "a cylinder shaped electrolytic capacitor" or something stupid like that and sue people for infringement. Patent trolls abuse the patent system but they don't commit fraud.

Oh, but it is fraud when there is a claim that it is innovation when in fact it is not. The court system just looks the other way.

They don't claim anything of the sort (at least not in court). They just claim to own a valid patent (which they do) and that the defendant's product is infringing on it (which may or may not be true). Is it unethical? Sure! Is it fraud, no--not in the same sense that this is at least.

Calling a corporation unethical makes as much sense as deliberately injecting ebola virus, and then calling the virus unethical. It is the entire corporatist system which is unethical. every legal market niche where there is money to be made will be occupied by some corporation. The patent system is simply being used for exactly what it was set up to do - enrich patent owners.

In that situation the government is participating in the fraud, by granting the patent in the first place, which means it's ok.:) I say this tongue in cheek, and also, this problem might end with the patent office/court, but begins with wealthy "inventors" who have sought to bribe legislators into creating the system of "intellectual"*"property"** that we have today.

* last time I checked rounded corners don't require much intellect** using property as a metaphor for ideas is intellectually dishonest

The short version is that patent trolls to something that's amoral and harmful to business and consumers....but it's legal. That's the difference. You can't prosecute someone for doing something legal, but morally repugnant. You can refuse to patronize their business, of course, but being patent trolls they don't actually make anything or have any customers. They have only victims.

Without that information (which is verifiable once you have it), I could write any crap and say it's an email from the Pope and you would absolutely have to treat it with the same evidential weight as you would this.

Additionally, it is trivial to forge email headers. There are only two ways to verify email headers: matching them up with the headers of emails at the other end of the correspondence or by comparing them to server logs, neither of which is likely to exist any longer. With or without header information, the email cannot be verified at this point anyway.

What's non-trivial is forging a message UID* and matching it to a known existing message UID* on the server and making sure the message is identical. Because *that* *will* still exist on the server (you think "deleting" a message from the server scrubs it from existence??)

*It's called a *U*ID for a reason - the string is *unique*, never to be used again once issued. If that UID doesn't appear on the database attached to a message then it wasn't issued.

Once opinion becomes action (like the lawsuit) you're damaging someone. The harm those actions commit should never be considered free speech because even damage on paper has a real effect on someone's life.

-Matt

(Billionaire's problems, I know, but the biggest downside of democracy is you spend most of your time defending scoundrels)

It's even simpler than that. 1st Amendment protects you from prosecution by the government for the fact and the content of your speech. It does not imply that you speech will have no consequences at all, including legal ones. If you damaged somebody by your speech - or intended to damage - you still can be prosecuted and sued. If, for example, you wrote a program and used it to steal money from the bank - you can not avoid prosecution claiming programming is like speech so it's protected by 1st amendment. It may be like speech, but stealing money isn't. In the same vein, saying "I own Facebook" is protected speech. Undertaking fraudulent legal actions with intent to steal Facebook's money under false premises of owning Facebook is not protected at all. Ceglia is getting a lesson about it right now.

" It means you get to say whatever you want on your own property."no, it doesn't. Freedom of Speech implies you are talking to someone. If that speech poses an immediate threat to others, or libelous, then you don't have a right to that.

"owners can simply add conditions..."Really, you want owners to put the rule for every social contract on a ticket? Robber Baron and company stores, that where it goes. We have seen it in history many times.Once again, ladies and gentlemen, we see more libertarian stances ar

A true libertarian response is... nothing. Actions have consequences, and using forged documents to back up a lawsuit is nothing any libertarian would defend. No libertarian would say that every individual property owner would list all manner of restrictions like you suggest.

The real puzzle is why you would come up with such a pale imitation of either a real libertarian or a statist imitation thereof. It's really piss poor. I dunno. Maybe you heard someone bashing libertarians, looked the word up in a

Yeah it seems to me that using fake evidence to sue a someone is fraud no matter who the actors are. So assuming that the evidence was fake a crime was committed.

But using fabricated evidence to imprison people is what Police and District Attorneys do across these United States every day. So, it only matters whether or not you are part of the power structure. So, basically, it's cool to lie to a judge as long as you're doing it for "good".

No, it's not. And those who slip up while doing it eventually get found out and get in plenty of trouble -- usually beyond the "relocated after a paid vacation" type of penalty (but not always, if what they did was in "good faith").

You are making a strong assumption. You are assuming that you know about the times when it happened, and they weren't caught. But that is not what one should expect.

The real answer is "We don't have any real idea how often it happens and isn't found out." We know that it happens, because it occasionally is found out. What we don't know is what fraction of the time is it found out. My guess would be a very small fraction. Probably considerably less than 1%. But I must acknowledge that a guess is all t

The Dallas police DWI squad did for years. They were night shift (to catch drunks) so any court time was overtime. The more they sent to jail, the more cash the cops made. So they'd lie about the field sobriety test so when people fought it, the cops would get OT. Some were making close to double-pay (40 hours catching "criminals" and 25 hours OT (at time and a half) is about the same as 80 hours). It wasn't until they caught a rich person in their scam that was able to pay thousands of dollars private

He lied in court papers, he prepared and filed fraudulent documents as part of evidentiary filings and then covered up their creation. Filing false statements to any court is a crime, and it's a very serious crime in federal court.

He can say whatever he wants in private or public, but he can't lie in court. Lieing to the courts has ALWAYS been illegal. Filing false documents in court has ALWAYS been illegal. The justice system can't work if people are allowed to lie and fake documents in court without punishment.

He's going to be lucky if he doesn't get 40 years in PMITA Federal prison.

If you were a cop, would you put as much effort into a case where it's very unlikely anyone would ever hear about it as you would into a case where it's likely the entire country is watching? Nobody wants to screw up when everyone's eyes are on you, but nobody outside of Littleplace, OH cares about Joe's Bike Shop. Do well, screw up, not a huge difference in rewards. But doing well or screwing up on the Facebook case can set the tone for the rest of your life.

I can understand not being happy that the "nobodies" of the world don't get the same special attention, but the fact is that it's not just the human nature of the people doing their jobs that you're railing against, it's the nature of all the people who hear about big and little stories that lead the people doing their jobs to treat those cases differently. No conspiracy necessary for celebrities to get more attention than you or I. The extra attention is what makes them celebrities.

Everything you said is true, but that doesn't make it right. Every officer or detective in the force may WANT to be involved in the high profile cases. Its the job of management to put them back at their desks doing the work that NEEDS to be done.

Management which has as much or more (usually more) to gain or lose from high-profile cases than the beat cop, and so will understandably put their best people on it. It goes all the way up until you finally reach somebody with a position so high that they won't be significantly affected by the outcome, and as long as they're not hearing complaints from the public, they don't care.

Right and wrong are great, but they're a lot more fungible when it's you that it's affecting.

Say you're a low-level investigator, on the edge of losing his house, with a wife and kids. You can spend an hour or two here and there that should have been spent on Joe's Bike Shop on the Facebook case instead to do a really bang-up job where it's going to be noticed, and maybe turn it into a promotion, or at least ensuring that you're not someone picked for the next round of layoffs. Is that such a big deal? One little hour? For your kids?

And let's be honest, that one little hour isn't a big deal, especially if it's you that's taking that one little hour, and we probably wouldn't begrudge that one guy his chance to finally get out from under his debt even if we weren't imagining that we are that guy. But, that story plays out a thousand times, and it adds up, and people try harder on the important cases.

And then, finally, what the fuck are you doing for Joe's Bike Shop? Because whether you know it or not, you're contributing to the attention the Facebook case is getting just by posting in this thread, or even reading it. You're eyes are seeing ads, or if you've got adblock on, by commenting in the story you're at the very least adding content to a site that's selling ads, who gets money from Facebook, who gets money from countless advertisers, who gives that money to people all over, including politicians, wh... you get the idea. You, personally, are adding to the motivation to give Facebook better justice, and are not adding that same motivation to Joe's Bike Shop, and are therefore contributing to the imbalance. The only possible way out of that is to expect people to treat two people who have vastly different potential effects on their future the same, and that's just not rational to expect of an actual person, and not just the abstraction who's not doing his job that you're probably imagining.

Everybody acts in perfectly reasonable, understandable and if not perfectly moral, certainly not what most would call immoral ways, and aggregate effects end up shafting the little guy. That's not to say that sometimes there aren't more sinister activities and motivations, but usually, it's just emergent behavior from a whole lot of people acting the exact same way you would in their situation. High-profile people get more attention. That's not to say that we shouldn't do what we can to ensure that the little guy gets justice, we absolutely should do what we can to even things up. But there's no sense in getting all self-righteous about it. You might as well get mad that electrons orbit protons, it's just the way things are.

Absolutely true, expecting individuals to act in the best interest of millions of strangers is just unrealistic. Of course, it doesn't make you any less a part of the problem. But hey, we're all part of a whole lot of problems. The tragedy of the commons isn't caused by "everyone but me", it's caused by everyone. The only real solution is to make it individually unprofitable to be a part of that tragedy, without making the cost of implementing the solution outweigh the savings gained from the solution's eff

It is obvious you have never worked in an investigative agency or really understand the politics involved.

First, this is a case that is being brought by the federal government. A high profile case. This means that the political stakes are very high, which can play a huge role in the prosecution of this case. So let's put things in order, shall we?

As a federal case in the Western District of New York, this falls under the prosecutorial purview of the United States Attorney's Office. Currently, that would

He can say whatever he wants in private or public, but he can't lie in court. Lieing to the courts has ALWAYS been illegal. Filing false documents in court has ALWAYS been illegal. The justice system can't work if people are allowed to lie and fake documents in court without punishment.

What I find curious is that Ceglia was represented by a number of different lawyers, including major lawfirms who made public statements about how the evidence was NOT fraudulent.

From TFA:

In his original complaint, filed in 2010, Mr. Ceglia was represented by Paul Argentieri, a sole practitioner in upstate New York. An amended lawsuit was filed in April 2011 by Robert W. Brownlie of DLA Piper, the world's largest law firm, and Dennis C. Vacco, a former New York attorney general now in private practice at Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman in Buffalo.

In 2011, Mr. Brownlie of DLA Piper declined a request by The New York Times to produce the original documents backing his client's legal claims. "That will come out during the course of litigation," Mr. Brownlie said. "Anyone who claims this case is fraudulent and brought by a scam artist will come to regret those claims."

Yet court records indicate that another law firm, Kasowitz Benson Friedman & Torres, had been hired by Mr. Ceglia before DLA Piper and Lippes Mathias becoming involved. Kasowitz Benson withdrew from the case and put DLA Piper and Lippes Mathias on notice that it had determined that the purported contract was a fraud.

Mr. Brownlie and Mr. Vacco later withdrew from the case. They did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.

When are we going to see these lawyers charged with something? (If not intentional, at a minimum, they should be sanctioned for incompetence and misrepresentation.)

And, if they withdrew from the case after they found out about the fraud, and they didn't immediately report it... that is even worse. Frankly, no one wou

And, if they withdrew from the case after they found out about the fraud, and they didn't immediately report it... that is even worse. Frankly, no one would have paid attention to Ceglia in the first place if it weren't for the fact that he had attorneys with good reputations backing him up. If they knew about any of this or even had a hint of it, they deserve a severe punishment as well.

Alexander Sawchuk estimates that it was in June or July of 1973 when he, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI), along with a graduate student and the SIPI lab manager, was hurriedly searching the lab for a good image to scan for a colleague's conference paper. They got tired of their stock of usual test images, dull stuff dating back to television standards work in the early 1960s. They wanted something glossy to ensure good output dynamic range, and they wanted a human face. Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of Playboy.

The engineers tore away the top third of the centerfold so they could wrap it around the drum of their Muirhead wirephoto scanner, which they had outfitted with analog-to-digital converters (one each for the red, green, and blue channels) and a Hewlett Packard 2100 minicomputer. The Muirhead had a fixed resolution of 100 lines per inch and the engineers wanted a 512×512 image, so they limited the scan to the top 5.12 inches of the picture, effectively cropping it at the subject's shoulders.